Overview

What is the role of founding leaders in shaping terrorist organizations? What follows the loss of this formative leader? These questions are especially important to religious terrorist groups, in which leaders are particularly revered. Tricia L. Bacon and Elizabeth Grimm provide a groundbreaking analysis of how religious terrorist groups manage and adapt to major shifts in leadership. They demonstrate that founders create the base from which their successors operate. Founders establish and explain the group's mission, and they determine and justify how it seeks to achieve its objectives. Bacon and Grimm argue that how successors position themselves in terms of the founder shapes a terrorist group's future course. They examine how and why different types of successors choose to pursue incremental or discontinuous change. Bacon and Grimm emphasize that the instability surrounding succession can place a group at its most vulnerable-the precise time to explore options to weaken or defeat it. Bacon and Grimm highlight similarities between Islamic terrorist groups abroad and Christian white nationalist groups such as the 1920s Ku Klux Klan in the United States. Drawing on extensive field research in Afghanistan, Somalia, and Pakistan, Terror in Transition features detailed analysis of groups such as al-Shabaab, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and al-Qaeda in Iraq / the Islamic State in Iraq, as well as the KKK. Offering a rigorous theoretical perspective on terrorist leadership transition, this policy-relevant book provides actionable recommendations for counterterrorism practitioners.

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9780231192255

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Reviews

Meticulous in its research, Terror in Transition delivers an abundance of new insight into the impact of succession on terrorist entities, delivering on its objective to better analyze the implications of decapitation. Focusing on the essence of a leader's how and why and its relationship to succession, Terror in Transition also provides CT practitioners with a framework to assess other options for influencing the direction of terrorist entities. -- Gina M. Bennett, author of <i>National Security Mom: Why Going Soft Will Make America Strong</i> Terror in Transition is the definitive study of how terrorist groups manage (or fail to manage) leadership transitions. Bacon and Grimm's analysis helps us understand how and why certain terrorist groups thrive while some split or otherwise cannot manage the transition. Their many insights can help counterterrorist officials exploit transition tensions to weaken extremist groups. -- Daniel Byman, author of <i>Spreading Hate: The Global Rise of White Supremacist Terrorism</i> An original, systematic, detailed, and rigorous analysis of terrorist leadership and succession. A very compelling study of a major topic. -- Richard English, author of <i>Does Terrorism Work?: A History</i> Meticulous in its research, Terror in Transition delivers an abundance of new insight into the impact of succession on terrorist entities, delivering on its objective to better analyze the implications of decapitation. Focusing on the essence of a leader's how and why and its relationship to succession, Terror in Transition also provides CT practitioners with a framework to assess other options for influencing the direction of terrorist entities. -- Gina M. Bennett, author of <i>National Security Mom: Why Going Soft Will Make America Strong</i> Bacon and Grimm have written an outstanding book, essential reading for anyone seeking to understand terrorist organizations, or leadership of violent groups in general. -- Brian Phillips * Small War Journals *

Meticulous in its research, Terror in Transition delivers an abundance of new insight into the impact of succession on terrorist entities, delivering on its objective to better analyze the implications of decapitation. Focusing on the essence of a leader's how and why and its relationship to succession, Terror in Transition also provides CT practitioners with a framework to assess other options for influencing the direction of terrorist entities. -- Gina M. Bennett, author of <i>National Security Mom: Why Going Soft Will Make America Strong</i> Terror in Transition is the definitive study of how terrorist groups manage (or fail to manage) leadership transitions. Bacon and Grimm's analysis helps us understand how and why certain terrorist groups thrive while some split or otherwise cannot manage the transition. Their many insights can help counterterrorist officials exploit transition tensions to weaken extremist groups. -- Daniel Byman, author of <i>Spreading Hate: The Global Rise of White Supremacist Terrorism</i> An original, systematic, detailed, and rigorous analysis of terrorist leadership and succession. A very compelling study of a major topic. -- Richard English, author of <i>Does Terrorism Work?: A History</i> Bacon and Grimm's Terror In Transition is a timely and rigorous case-study analysis that helps us understand the often misunderstood world of leadership succession in religious terrorist groups. Their typology provides a critical means of how we should assess founders and successors during leadership transitions. A must-read for both academics and policymakers. -- Bryan C. Price, author of <i>Targeting Top Terrorists: Understanding Leadership Removal in Counterterrorism Strategy</i>

An original, systematic, detailed, and rigorous analysis of terrorist leadership and succession. A very compelling study of a major topic. -- Richard English, author of <i>Does Terrorism Work?: A History</i>

An original, systematic, detailed, and rigorous analysis of terrorist leadership and succession. A very compelling study of a major topic. -- Richard English, author of <i>Does Terrorism Work?: A History</i> Terror in Transition is the definitive study of how terrorist groups manage (or fail to manage) leadership transitions. Bacon and Grimm's analysis helps us understand how and why certain terrorist groups thrive while some split or otherwise cannot manage the transition. Their many insights can help counterterrorist officials exploit transition tensions to weaken extremist groups. -- Daniel Byman, author of <i>Spreading Hate: The Global Rise of White Supremacist Terrorism</i>

Author Information

Tricia L. Bacon is an associate professor in the School of Public Affairs at American University and director of the Policy Anti-Terrorism Hub. She is the author of Why Terrorist Groups Form International Alliances (2018). She previously spent ten years working on counterterrorism at the U.S. Department of State. Elizabeth Grimm is an associate professor of teaching in the Security Studies Program at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She is the author of How the Gloves Came Off: Lawyers, Policy Makers, and Norms in the Debate on Torture (2017). She has also worked in the defense and security sectors of the U.S. government.

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